[dirtyid]

So why not dump this very safe water on Japanese soil? There's lakes and reservoirs a short drive away. A few tankers a day over 30 years to clear up 1.25 million tons is cheap to losing 600M of fish exports per year to PRC and barely impact local enviroment on time scales involved. Maybe inspire some new Godzilla movies. Oh wait, it's because Japanese domestic politics wouldn't allow it. So gov would rather internationalize the issue.

Japanese domestic politics at it's worst.

[Prickle]

Because that's not how dilution works? That part should be incredibly obvious.

I keep seeing this nonsense about "why not dump it into the dirt", as if that ever made any sense. The answer is always simple, there is already a massive amount of Tritium in the ocean.

The water, is also literally sea water. It is salt water taken from the ocean, now with some radioactive isotopes of hydrogen (H20 remember?) which is called tritium. The dilution process literally takes sea water, and mixes it.

Dumping salt water into a local lake or river, or the dirt is literally what starts ecological disasters. But you didn't even do basic research did you?

[dirtyid]

>Because that's not how dilution works

...

>But you didn't even do basic research did you?

It makes sense BECAUSE that's exactly how dilution works. Diluting in Japanese lakes (or just the closest) is still as safe as diluting the fucking ocean because japanese lakes are also fucking massive relative to volume of water to be released. Politicians chose ocean because domestic politics. Use your brain and do some basic math. Dump all 1.25 tons / 1.2B litres / 660T becquerels into Lake Inawashiro @ 5.4km3 / 5.4T litres and it'll work out to ~120 becquerels of tritium per litre, still less than WHO limit of 10,000 per litre for drinking water. Diluting 1/5400 of the one lake with some salt water, +0.01% salienty, which is... drum roll fresh water territory. That's dumping everything at once. Now spread it out over 30 years. Spread that out over even more bodies of water and it's even more trivial. JP gov chose negligible domestic ecologic disaster with terrible domestic optics that will affect domestic sentiment and governance for negligible chance of international disaster with more managable optics. Which is still based on assumption that TEPCO can be trusted for decades and release will indeed be negligible. But we both know that's far from certain given reputation, hence JP gov would rather hedge by offloading potential political fallout into international commons, because they can't trust TEPCO not to fuck around on the time scale involved, so best not even risk something as sensitive as more radiation drama on JP soil. They'd rather risk losing 100s of billions in fishing exports than potential domestic ire. Which is fine. But also recognize this issue has as much if not more politics considerations than science. But you didn't even do basic political/geopolitical thinking relative to science did you?

[Prickle]

Ok, lets take this at face value. Does any, and I do mean literally any country on this planet, dump their tritium water in the local lake?

Problem 1 : Water extraction

Extracting large volumes of water, is naturally not a ecologically friendly practice. It's actually one of the large barriers stopping us from solving water issues via large scale desalination. Ecological damage includes animals being sucked in, to higher water temperatures causing algae blooms. (Moving all that water, does overall increase the water temperature) Furthermore, it may actually case over-oxygenation of the water, which can cause it's own set of problems. But I'm not a specialist so I will leave that topic as "I have heard of this thing".

Problem 2 : Actual dilution

That's not all though. You need to ensure local PH balances are stable. Since we are starting off by using ocean water (it was the closest and most viable option), you now have to do an ecological analysis of the lake, and make the water match the lake's overall water profile. That requires a whole other set of equipment, and imported materials to balance it out. Of course, "it's relatively speaking, a drop in an lake", but that's the thing, it's a lake. It doesn't have ocean currents.

The Lake is overall a enclosed environment, when compared to the ocean. And it is one hell of a lot more expensive than the ocean, which is right next door!

Now lets take your number, 120 becquerels of tritium per liter. Lets ignore the WHO safe level for a moment. Since our goal is diluting it, preferably, we won't appreciably change the per-liter value of tritium in fresh water. But that's not the case is it? The natural background amount of tritium in 1cubic liter in surface water is around 0.4–1.2 Bq/L. So your proposal, increases the amount by 100x. That misses the entire point of "dilution", which is why I said it doesn't count. When you dilute something like this, the whole point is to dilute in a manner that makes environmental effects negligible. Your proposal, misses the entire point.

Further more, they are only releasing ~28becquerels (officially it is 22becquerels) per year into the ocean, to ensure proper dilution. Divide 28 by 365 days, that is 0.077becquerels per cubic liter (rounded up), in an entire 24 hour cycle! Which would bring it very close to the natural background! This is dilution! This is the bloody point of it all!

Dumping it all in a lake, makes this completely pointless!

Problem 3 : Logistics (AKA, why are we even transporting this?)

This one is simple. Why in the actual hell, would you spend time and risk a truck flipping, rather than just use the pipe you already have and release into the ocean? And this ties into the two previous comments. You have to extract water from the lake, bring it to the water storage facility, mix it, then transport it back.

Or take sea water, desalinate it, then get it to the correct profile, then transport... The amount of extra steps, and chances for human error are significantly higher. It's impractical, and a waste of time.

Problem 4 : Local Resistance (Or domestic politics)

Naturally, locals don't like it. It doesn't matter if it's safe, or checked by independent auditors or international organizations. Humans are overall, emotional, social creatures. Not logical ones. Local pressure is naturally easier to evade if you say "It won't be your problem in the future", which is unfortunately how humans work. Hell, if I had the money, I'd buy the lake (which isn't possible), and let them dump it there (Which I cant, because the fresh-water underground water table is legally protected). Of course, I would tell them "It won't be a problem in 14 years, due to the half-life", but they won't care.

Non-salt water is also significantly more valuable than salt water. It's the difference between incredibly energy intensive and expensive desalination and, just not needing it. People care more about non-salt water than salt water.

I'd happily drink it, assuming it's boiled and de-salted. (And I am not being facetious)

[dirtyid]

You're drawing some arbituary point of even more negligible dilution when mathematically, flat out dumping everything straight into Inawashiro is still merely 1% of WHO limit for safe drinking water. It would already be adequately diluted for human health. It's already likely sufficiently negligible considering the ratio of solution:solvent. Spread that over 30/50 or whatever years over water cycles and different locations and it's even less of an issue. It would be bloody diluted regardless, especially so when titrated on multi decade time scale. I'd happily drink it. And I am not being facetious.

Ultimately, regardless of feasibility, it's simply a solution which they didn't even consider, because again, as you recognized why would they. That's politically suicide even if it's deemed ecologically sound plan. Which circles back to your first point, does any country dump tritium in their local lake? Not publically, and Fukushima is notoriously public politics. But you know what most try to do with nuclear waste? They attempt to engineer supremely expensive local storage solutions, and frequently fail only to spend stupid resources to warehouses it domestically, instead of dumping that into the commons. It's 60 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's trivial storage problem for nation state. Hence problem 1/2/3 isn't even a problem especially if they bothered with local dumping studies which again, is 3 tankers per day for 30 years. It's nothing. Desalinating 1.25m tons is also trivial, and not even that costly. A 10m gallon / day plant cost less than 100M and sort filter that in a month. Which is peanuts versus aggregate clean up cost, and even potential lost fishing revenue. Cost isn't driving this decision to release, politics is. And it's not regional geopolitics because JP isn't releasing this water out of spite for her neighbours. Let's not forget, it's not PRC but most of region as well as countries across the Pacific not pleased with this decision.

Which ultimately circles back to point 4, and my broader point. LOCALs don't like it. LOCALs vote. Can't risk LOCAL votes even if they're irrational, and EVEN worse if their rational distrust of TEPCO becomes reality down the line. IIRC even more containated water already leeched into ground water. Risk of future leaks, however "safe" this water is, and heads will roll. So the politically expedient solution is to dump into ocean and remove any potential risk. The political math is simple, they would never even consider local disposal or long term local storage due to the risks, so into the ocean it goes. Which again, is fine. Fine in the sense that it's a calculated decision. But let's just acknowledge that's whats actually driving decision making. Less science and more domestic JP politics. They didn't have to dump this water. A 5T economy can afford to store it indefintely and ignore geopolitical shit show. But domestic JP politics want that water gone from JP territory, so into the ocean it goes.

[freetime2]

So I agree with your point that it would be heavily opposed by local residents if they tried to dump it in a lake. And yes an elected government is going to be more concerned with keeping their voters happy than than their neighbors who are engaged in opportunistic political posturing. But I don't think this is unique to Japan at all. Look at the pushback that the US got when they tried to bury spent nuclear waste in an uninhabited section of desert [1]. And politicians being beholden to their constituents' demands is a feature of democracy, not a bug.

And also like Prickle says it's all moot because releasing it into the ocean is the better solution - in terms of cost, risk, dilution effectiveness, and political feasibility. Maybe their fishing industry would be impacted less if they dumped it in a lake - although I suspect the effect will be temporary as the global market reconfigures itset, and South Korea already bans fish and agricultural products from Fukushima, and Japan was already headed toward a trade war with China for other geopolitical reasons. There would also be economic impacts as a result of dumping it in Lake Inawashiro - for example to tourism in the Lake Inawashiro area. Is that a good trade-off? I don't think the answer is as obvious as you claim.

And I don't know how you can claim "it's simply a solution which they didn't even consider" - were you there in the room when the engineers were drawing up ways to treat the wastewater before deciding on this one? Honestly I find it perplexing that you are so fixated on this notion that because they didn't choose some suboptimal solution to dispose of waste water, somehow that is emblematic of "Japanese domestic politics at it's worst".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

[dirtyid]

>perplexing that you are so fixated

It was just a retort to OP comment of regional reaction to JP release being geopolitics at it's worst when incentive calculus points to decision to release being JP domestic politics at it's worst (even if it's also politically optimal/expedient). As far as being in room, I don't see how that's relevant. All we have is what has been publicly communicated and it was between aerial release and water, both of which = release into commons, what solution makes to public discourse is as important as what doesn't - the numbers released so far suggest domestic storage/disposal was feasible, but again, that's a politically non-starter. I find it perplexing people can judge what's optimal/suboptimal based on science when this is predominantly a political issue due to domestic and regional trust of TEPCO. The fundmental issue is people, including japanese does not trust TEPCO even with oversight to behave correctly long term. So the politically expedient thing for JP politics to do is dump in commons to avoid potential domestic blowback, because local storage not politically viable option. And natural regional geopolitical response to that would be fishing bans because JP made a potential domestic problem a regional one. How optimal the solution is a function of politics/incentives. In this case one that involves radiation that sensible geopolitical response would be to keep that shit in your borders regardless of cost. Yucca mountain fine example, it's a fucking shitshow but it's still US at least keeping their nuclear waste on domestic soil, it's US gov eating the cost, as they should. But IIT we have useful idiots whose like, punishing said dick move is geopolitics at it's worst.

[Prickle]

It's not arbitrary, and I don't understand why you think it is. It's not even a mathematical issue. At it's core, it has always been an environmental issue.

Fundamentally, the complaint is that the tritium water will cause environmental damage. => And will lead to damage to humans. If we go down to the roots of the issue, it has not, and never was centered around whether the bq/L was below human drinking limits. It has always been about whether the bq/L amount is safe for the environment. That's why I brought up the natural range in the first place. If anything, claims about it being safe to drink have been a distraction brought up to placate protestors. (And it misses the point)

Therefore, the powerplant should be (and has been) required to reduce environmental effects. When it comes to controlling the Catastrophically F'd reactors, they've been less than capable to say the least. But that's not explicitly related to the tritium water we are discussing about right now.

So, the goal should be to minimize environmental damage. In order to better ensure that, the Tritium water should not cause a major change in composition of the water. Therefore, the bq/L of tritium in water, should preferably, not change beyond the naturally expected amount. (ie: 0.4–1.2 bq/L) Hence why I brought up how your solution violates that basic idea, while the sea release does not. I even showed you the very basic napkin math that made me come to that conclusion.

You do realize, one of the other proposed solutions was actually release by air? After all, Tritium is an isotope of Hydrogen. That plan was specifically dropped because the amount of expected tritium per cubic liter of air, would be greater than when released in water. The decision from the start, has been about minimizing the becquerels per cubic liter. Certainly, the government would accept nothing else.

I should point out, the water is more dangerous when stored. By default, the stored water has a significantly higher concentration until it is diluted. Certainly, higher than the safe level. A leak from the tanks would cause significantly more environmental damage. Just like with aircraft design, where every contingency is considered, we must also consider every contingency for when that containment fails. History has shown us multiple times, that inevitably, even the best built systems are destroyed by human error.

Quite frankly, your complaints are more arbitrary than mine. You are proposing that Japan should take the concerns of uninformed individuals, over the concerns and claims made by professionals.

[dirtyid]

No, I'm highlighting professionals, ESPECIALLY policy makers, are politically constrained in what they can recommend/advocate. They are more compromised by default. I'm aware of the release by air solution, and it reinforces my fact that domestic storage/disposal, though expensive, was likely never properly considered, not because of science or viability, but because domestic politics forbids it. Fundamentally, the problem is one of (geo)political trust. No one trusts TEPCO not to fuck up regardless of oversight, hence the actual science is _politically_ irrelevant. When that's the trust baseline, the region would prefer Japan to keep their domestic nuclear mess up as a domestic problem, within their borders either via domestic storage or disposal. JP political incentive is the opposite, they'd rather dump it off into commons to prevent blowback citing good science, when good science is irrelevant because it can be trivially invalidated by conspiracy/coverup, which TEPCO+JP politics name a more iconic duo. Good science isn't causing SKR/PRC residents to panic and stock up salt or reduce fish consumption if JP fish isn't banned to reduce perception of contamination risk. JP politicians did what's optimal/expedient for them and constituents - offload a literal radioactive problem into regional geopolitics. Which is... fine, even if dick move because one would expect wealthy countries with capability to keep these problems domestic despite cost. The original response to OP was to point out that JP domestic politics at its worst is what’s driving regional geopolitics, which is not responding in a vacuum, and political responses not constrained by science, because science is not sufficient without political trust.